Textual History of the Qur'an: Difference between revisions

This article examines the [[Islam|Islamic]] transmission history of the [[Quran]].  

The perfect transmission of the Quran in textual and oral form is an article of faith for most schools and sects of Islam and figures highly in the beliefs of Muslims around the divine nature of their religion. The orthodox Islamic scholars argue that the Qur'an today is identical to that received by Prophet [[Muhammad]]. This contention however is challenged both by parts of the Islamic tradition itself and the findings of modern scholarship.

Multiple sources report that the third caliph Uthman was concerned because there were clear differences in the recitation of Qur'an among people of Sham and people of Iraq. The differences were so great Uthman and his companions feared future dispute about true Qur'an and its contents. So Uthman asked Hafsa for her copy so that a committee could write a single version of the rasm (an early stage of Arabic orthography, which lacked diacritics such as short vowel signs and with scarce use of dotting to distinguish certain consonants). Uthman then sent out his official Quranic codex to a small number of important cities and ordered that all other copies and fragments be burned. This occured around 650 CE. During the prior 20 years since Muhammad's death, and for some time afterwards, thousands of variants read by the companions which often did not fit this rasm were in circulation, as documented in hadiths and works such as Ibn Abi Dawud's Kitab al Masahif.<ref>See Jeffery's famous compilation of readings attributed to the companions: Jeffery, Arthur, [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.76212

Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'an. The old Codices], Leiden, Brill, 1937</ref>

Al-Tabari's tafsir for verse 4:24 includes narrations saying that ibn 'Abbas, ubay ibn Ka'b, and Sa'id ibn Jubayr (others too in other tafsirs) included the words 'until a prescribed period' ('ila ajal musamma') after the words 'whom you profit by'. If one were to speculate that this represents an abrogated version of the verse, where is the evidence and why did these sahaba not seem to know?

After Muhammad's choice of Abdullah bin Mas'ud, he was followed by Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hudhaifa, Mu'adh bin Jabal and Ubai bin Ka'b.<ref name="bin Masud"></ref> What is odd is that we do not find any mention of Zayd Bin Thabit who was ultimately entrusted by Uthman with the task of collecting the Qur'an from scraps.  

The Qur'an that Ibn Mas'ud had was known and agreed upon by many Muslims. When Uthman ordered that all codices must be destroyed and that only Zayd's codex is to be preserved, The reaction of Abdallah ibn Masud was great.  

We will provide you with the mention of just a few of the differences here in illustration of the nature of the variations between the texts:  

A significant number of early Hijazi manuscript fragments have been radio-carbon dated to the first Islamic century, covering the majority of the Qur'an between them. All but one of those discovered so far have been of the Uthmanic text type (the exception being the [[Sana'a Manuscript|Sana'a manuscript]]<ref>"The text does not belong to the 'Uṯmānic textual tradition, making this the only known manuscript of a non-'Uṯmānic text type." Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergmann, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qur’ān of the Prophet,” Arabica 57, no. 4 (2010): 343–436. p.343</ref>). However, these manuscripts are not identical. Every early manuscript falls into a small number of regional families (identified by variants in their rasm, or consonantal text), and each moreover contains non-canonical variants in dotting and lettering that can often be traced back to those reported of the Companions.<ref name="Morteza Karimi-Nia">Morteza Karimi-Nia of the Encyclopaedia Islamica Foundation, Tehran, says in a paper on the Codex Mashhad manuscript:

There are claims in the hadith that certain verses are missing. For example the '[[Stoning|stoning verse]]' for adultery. The present day Qur’an does not contain the [[Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Stoning|penalty of Rajm]] (stoning) for adulterers, which abrogated the previous penalty, rather the Qur'an now extant assigns whipping as the punishment for adultery:{{Quote|{{Muslim|17|4194}}|Abdullah b. 'Abbas reported that 'Umar b. Khattab sat on the pulpit of Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) and said: Verily Allah sent Muhammad (may peace be upon him) with truth and He sent down the Book upon him, and the verse of stoning was included in what was sent down to him. We recited it, retained it in our memory and understood it. Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) awarded the punishment of stoning to death (to the married adulterer and adulteress) and, after him, we also awarded the punishment of stoning, I am afraid that with the lapse of time, the people (may forget it) and may say: We do not find the punishment of stoning in the Book of Allah, and thus go astray by abandoning this duty prescribed by Allah. Stoning is a duty laid down in Allah's Book for married men and women who commit adultery when proof is established, or it there is pregnancy, or a confession.}}[[Al-Nurayn and Al-Wilaya|Al-Nurayn and al-Wilaya]] are two surahs (chapters) that are claimed to be included in the Qur'an by the scholars of some Shi'ite sects. These sects argue that Ali had a different copy of the Qur'an as compared with the third Caliph Uthman. Sunni Muslims scholars see claims of the existence of these verses as frauds. Sunni scholars often allege that they are forgeries intended to increase animosity towards the Shi'ite Muslims in the Sunni world.

ibn Masud  too included Khal' and Hafd in his Qur'an mashaf (codice)<ref>al-Suyuti in his Tafseer Dur al-Manthur, Volume 4 page 421</ref>. As also did Ibn 'Abbas in his mashaf, while Umaya bin Abdullah and Umar recited  them as supplications <ref name="SuyutiItqan"></ref>, as did Uthman <ref>according to hadith 7032 in Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah</ref>. One hadith says that these were du'as given by the angel Jibreel to Muhammad.<ref>“While the Messenger of Allah - peace and blessings of Allah be upon him- was supplicating against the Mudhar, Gabriel came to him and signaled him to remain silent, so he became silent. Then Gabriel said, “O Muhammad, Allah has not sent you to disparage or condemn, rather he has sent you as a mercy. And he has not sent you to bring torment. ‘Not for you, [O Muhammad, but for Allah], is the decision whether He should [cut them down] or forgive them or punish them, for indeed, they are wrongdoers.’ [Qur’an 3:128] Then he taught him this supplication, ‘O Allah! We beg help from You alone …’” Sunan al-Kubra, Hadith 3142</ref> Al-Suyuti quotes another scholar saying that Surah al-Khal' and Surah al-Hafd were removed from the Qur'an and are now used as du'as.<ref>"''l-Husain b. 'l-Munadi in his work l-Nasikh wa l-Mansukh said: of the material that was removed from the Qur'an but not from memory are the two chapters of the qunut supplications that are recited in the witr prayer; they were named l-Khal`a and l-Hafd''" p.15 of the chapter on Nasikh and Mansukh in the abridged English translation of Al-Itqan by Muneer Fareed</ref><ref>A longer quote of al-Munadi's words is even more revealing: "''Az-Zarkashi said in al-Burhaan (2/37): The leading hadeeth scholar Abu’l-Husayn Ahmad ibn Ja‘far al-Manaadi said in his book an-Naasikh wa’l-Mansookh, concerning that which has been abrogated from the Qur’an but was not erased from what people had learned by heart, that this included the two soorahs that are recited in Qunoot in Witr prayer. He said: There is no difference of opinion among the earlier scholars that these two soorahs were written down in the mushafs that were attributed to Ubayy ibn Ka‘b, and it was narrated from the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) that he recited them, and they were called the soorahs of al-Khal‘ and al-Hafd.''" https://islamqa.info/en/195880</ref>

Ubai said that it was considered as a saying from the Qur'an for a while during Muhammad's lifetime. At best, it could be claimed to be an example of a type of abrogation where the verses are lost. Why the verse would be abrogated is, conveniently, a mystery.

However, this report is not considered credible by academics for a number of reasons, including the fact that all extant manuscripts (except for the Ṣan'ā' 1 palimpsest lower text) can be traced to a single archetype, as explained above. Moreover, Sadeghi and Bergmann have shown that the Basran author of this report about al-Hajjaj had simply mistaken some errors in a particular manuscript as being the Uthmanic standard and compared it with the manuscript of al-Hajjaj.<ref>Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergmann, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qur’ān of the Prophet,” Arabica 57, no. 4 (2010): 343–436. p.365, footnote 36</ref></ref>  

Today we have seven or ten canonical qira'at, which are slightly different early oral recitations or readings of the Qur'an by famous readers. There were once many more qira'at, from which twenty-five were described by Abu 'Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam two centuries after Muhammad's death, and restricted to seven after three centuries following a work by Abu Bakr Ibn Mujahid (d.936 CE). A further three qira'at were added to the canonical seven many centuries later by ibn al-Jazari (d.1429 CE)(those of Abu Jafar, Ya'qub and Khalaf). These three were popular since the time of the seven, and provide additional variants<ref>See for example 19:25, 82:9, and 21:104 on [https://corpuscoranicum.de/lesarten/ corpuscoranicum.de]</ref>. Some scholars regarded them as having a somewhat less reliable transmission status than the seven.<ref>Ahmad 'Ali al Imam (1998), "Variant Readings of the Quran: A critical study of their historical and linguistic origins", Institute of Islamic Thought: Virginia, USA, pp.126-133</ref>

Nasser further shows that grammarians such as al-Faraa<ref>Ibid. p.167</ref>, and scholars such as al-Tabari readily criticised variants in these same readings shortly before they were canonised<ref>Ibid. pp.41-47</ref> (as did al-Zamakhshari 200 years afterwards)<ref>Ibid. pp.6-7</ref>). Even ibn Mujahid said variants now considered canonical were wrong.<ref>Ibid. pp.59-61 (for specific examples of him criticising such variants, many of which are unique to particular readers or transmitters, see the list and summary table in chapter 2, pp.64-89 of Nasser's follow-up book Nasser, S. H. "The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān (324/936)" Brill, 2020; or see the examples given by van Putten on Twitter.com [https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1296392400735277057 here] and [https://twitter.com/PhDniX/status/1090545330402267136 here]</ref> After ibn Mujahid's book, a genre of literature arose that "''indicates the rising need to provide grammatical and syntactic proofs in order to back up the arguments necessary to assess the superiority of one reading over another.''" <ref>Ibid. pp.60-61 (see also the footnote on p.61)</ref>. Ibn Mujahid's decision to select just 7 readings drew frequent criticism after its publication<ref>Ibid. p.64</ref>. The consensus notion that these 7 were divinely preserved in a chain back to the Prophet himself only came about later, by which time there was of course no room for arguments and reasoning to try to prove the superiority of one variant over another.<ref>Ibid. pp. 59-61</ref> As Nasser writes, "''The problem that caused heated discussion for centuries afterwards was the origin and transmission of the eponymous Readings; were these Readings transmitted through tawātur or single chains of transmission? Are there Readings better than others or are they equally divine?''"<ref>ibid. p.65</ref>.